Matthew Parker (6 August 1504 – 17 May 1575) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559 until his death in 1575. He was also an influential theologian and arguably the co-founder (with Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker) of a distinctive tradition of Anglican theological thought.

Parker was one of the primary architects of the Thirty-nine Articles, the defining statements of Anglican doctrine. The Parker collection of early English manuscripts, including the book of St Augustine Gospels and Version A of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was created as part of his efforts to demonstrate that the English Church was historically independent from Rome, creating one of the world's most important collections of ancient manuscripts.

Contents

Early years

The eldest son of William Parker, he was born in Norwich, in St Saviour's parish. His mother's maiden name was Alice Monins and she may have been related by marriage to Thomas Cranmer. When William Parker died, in about 1516, his widow married John Baker. Parker was sent in 1522 to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,[2] and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1525. He was ordained deacon on 20 April 1527 and priest on 15 June the same year. In September 1527 he was elected a fellow of Corpus Christi and began his Master of Arts degree in 1528. He was one of the Cambridge scholars whom Thomas Wolsey wished to transplant to his newly-founded 'Cardinal College' at Oxford.

Parker, like Cranmer, declined Wolsey's invitation. He had come under the influence of the Cambridge reformers, and after Anne Boleyn's recognition as queen he was made her chaplain. Through her, he was appointed dean of the college of secular canons at Stoke-by-Clare in Suffolk in 1535. Hugh Latimer wrote to him in that year urging him not to fall short of the expectations which had been formed of his ability. Shortly before Anne Boleyn's death in 1536, she commended to his care her daughter Elizabeth.[3] In 1537 he was appointed chaplain to King Henry VIII. In 1538 he was threatened with prosecution, but Richard Yngworth, the Bishop of Dover, reported to Thomas Cromwell that Parker "hath ever been of a good judgment and set forth the Word of God after a good manner. For this he suffers some grudge." He graduated DD in that year, and in 1541 was appointed to the second prebend in the reconstituted cathedral church of Ely. In 1544, on Henry VIII's recommendation, he was elected master of Corpus Christi College, and in 1545 vice-chancellor of the university. He got into some trouble with the chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, over a ribald play, Pammachius, performed by the students, which derided the old ecclesiastical system.

Rise to power

On the passing of the Act of Parliament in 1545 enabling the king to dissolve chantries and colleges, Parker was appointed one of the commissioners for Cambridge, and their report may have saved its colleges from destruction. Stoke, however, was dissolved in the following reign, and Parker received a generous pension. He took advantage of the new reign to marry in June 1547, before clerical marriages were legalised by Parliament and Convocation, Margaret, daughter of Robert Harlestone, a Norfolk squire. They had initially planned to marry since about 1540 but had waited until it was not a felony for priests to marry.[4] The marriage was a happy one, although Queen Elizabeth's dislike of Margaret was later to cause Parker much distress. During Kett's Rebellion, he preached in the rebels' camp on Mousehold Hill near Norwich, without much effect, and later encouraged his secretary, Alexander Neville, to write his history of the rising.

Parker's association with Protestantism advanced with the times, and he received higher promotion under John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, than under the moderate Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset. At Cambridge, he was a friend of Martin Bucer and preached Bucer's funeral sermon in 1551. In 1552 he was promoted to the rich deanery of Lincoln, and in July 1553 he supped with Northumberland at Cambridge, when the duke marched north on his hopeless campaign against the accession of Mary Tudor. As a supporter of Northumberland and a married man, under the new regime Parker was deprived of his deanery, his mastership of Corpus Christi, and his other preferments. However, he survived Mary's reign without leaving the country – a fact that would not have endeared him to the more ardent Protestants who went into exile and idealised those who were martyred by Queen Mary. Parker respected authority, and when his time came he could consistently impose authority on others. He was not eager to assume this task, and made great efforts to avoid promotion to the archbishopric of Canterbury, which Elizabeth designed for him as soon as she had succeeded to the throne.

Archbishop of Canterbury (1559–1575)

Elizabeth wanted a moderate man, so she chose Parker. There was also an emotional attachment. Parker had been the favourite chaplain of Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn. Before Anne was arrested in 1536 she had entrusted Elizabeth's spiritual well-being to Parker. A few days afterwards Anne was executed following charges of adultery, incest and treason. Parker also possessed all the qualifications Elizabeth expected from an archbishop, except celibacy. Elizabeth had a strong prejudice against married clergy, and in addition she seems to have disliked Margaret Parker personally, often treating her so rudely that her husband was "in horror to hear it."[5] After a visit to Lambeth, the Queen duly thanked her hostess but maliciously asked how she should address her, "For Madam I may not call you, mistress I should be ashamed to call you".[6]

He was elected on 1 August 1559 but, given the turbulence and executions that had preceded Elizabeth's accession, it was difficult to find the requisite four bishops willing and qualified to consecrate Parker, and not until 19 December was that ceremony performed at Lambeth by William Barlow, formerly Bishop of Bath and Wells, John Scory, formerly Bishop of Chichester, Miles Coverdale, formerly Bishop of Exeter, and John Hodgkins, Bishop of Bedford. The allegation of an indecent consecration in the Nag's Head Fable seems first to have been made by the Jesuit Christopher Holywood in 1604, and has since been discredited. Parker's consecration was, however, legally valid only by the plenitude of the Royal Supremacy approved by the Commons and reluctantly by a vote of the Lords 21-18; the Edwardine Ordinal, which was used, had been repealed by Mary Tudor and not re-enacted by the parliament of 1559.

His consecration gave rise to a dispute, which continues to this day, over its sacramental validity from the perspective of the Roman Catholic Church. The Papal Commission which pronounced Anglican Orders "null and void" in 1896 could not dispute that the 'manual' succession, that is, the actual laying on of hands and prayer, had not taken place after all the legal and canonical requirements were met or that two of the four consecrators of Parker, Barlow and Hodgkins, had invalid orders, since they had been made bishops with the Roman Pontifical in the Latin Rite in the 1530s; and therefore, their Orders were valid according to the definition stated in Apostolicae Curae. John Scory and Miles Coverdale, the other two consecrators were consecrated with the English Ordinal of 1550 on the same day in 1551 by Cranmer, Hodgkins and Ridley who were consecrated with the Catholic Rite in 1532, -37 and -47 respectively.[7] All four of Parker's consecrators were, therefore, consecrated by men who themselves had been with the Roman Pontifical. The Pope asserted in the condemnation that "defect of form and intent" were insufficient to make a bishop, and therefore represented a break in the apostolic succession.[8] Manual transmission was therefore not sufficient. The English Rite was defective in form, i.e. the words of the Rite, and absence of the consecrators intention to create a sacrificing bishop, and so Anglican Orders were "null and void." The Church of England Archbishops of Canterbury and York rejected this argument in Saepius Officio of 1897. the rebuttal was written to demonstrate the sufficiency of the form and intention used in the Anglican Ordinal. According to them the required references to the sacrificial priesthood never existed in many ancient Catholic ordination liturgies nor in certain current Eastern-rite ordination liturgies that the Roman Catholic Church considers valid. The archbishops argued that a particular formula in this respect as a sine qua non made no difference to the substance or validity of the act since the only two components that all ordination rites had in common were prayer and the laying on of hands, and that the words in the Anglican Rite itself gave plenty of evidence as to the intent of the participants as stated in the preface, words and action of the Rite. They pointed out that the only fixed and sure sacramental formulary is the baptismal.[9] They argued that it was not necessary to consecrate a bishop as 'sacrificing priest' since he already was one by virtue of being a priest, except in ordinations per saltim i.e. from deacon to bishop when the ordinand was made priest and bishop at once, a practice discontinued and forbidden[10] They also pointed out that none of the priests ordained with the English Ordinal were re-ordained as a requirement by Queen Mary - some did so voluntarily and some were re-anointed, a practice common at the time.[11] On the contrary the Queen ordered all married clergy, estimated at 15% of the total at the beginning of her reign in 1553, to put their wives away.[12] Parker was ordained in 1527 in the Latin Rite and before the break with Rome. As such according to this Rite he was a 'sacrificing priest.' The Orders of the Church of Ireland were condemned as part of the wider denunciation of Anglican Orders.

In the first year of his archepiscopacy Parker participated in the consecration of 11 new bishops and confirmed two who had been ordained in previous reigns[13]

Parker mistrusted popular enthusiasm, and he wrote in horror of the idea that "the people" should be the reformers of the Church. He was convinced that if ever Protestantism was to be firmly established in England at all, some definite ecclesiastical forms and methods must be sanctioned to secure the triumph of order over anarchy, and he vigorously set about the repression of what he thought a mutinous individualism incompatible with a catholic spirit.[14]

He was not an inspiring leader and no dogma or prayer-book is associated with his name. However, the English composer Thomas Tallis contributed Nine Tunes for Archbishop Parker's Psalter which bears his name. The 55 volumes published by the Parker Society include only one by its eponymous hero, and that is a volume of correspondence. He was a disciplinarian, a scholar, a modest and moderate man of genuine piety and irreproachable morals.

Probably his most famous saying, prompted by the arrival of Mary Queen of Scots in England, was "I fear our good Queen has the wolf by the ears"[15]

Later years

Parker avoided involvement in secular politics and was never admitted to Elizabeth's Privy Council. Ecclesiastical politics gave him considerable trouble. Some of the evangelical reformers wanted liturgical changes and at least the option not to wear certain clerical vestments, if not their complete prohibition. Early presbyterians wanted no bishops, and the conservatives opposed all these changes, often preferring to move in the opposite direction toward the practices of the Henrician church. The queen herself begrudged episcopal privilege until she eventually recognised it as one of the chief bulwarks of the royal supremacy. To Parker's consternation, the queen refused to add her imprimatur to his attempts to secure conformity, though she insisted that he achieve this goal. Thus Parker was left to stem the rising tide of Puritan feeling with little support from parliament, convocation or the Crown.

The bishops' Interpretations and Further Considerations, issued in 1560, tolerated a lower vestiarian standard than was prescribed by the rubric of 1559, but it fell short of the desires of the anti-vestiarian clergy like Coverdale (one of the bishops who had consecrated Parker) who made a public display of their nonconformity in London.

The Book of Advertisements, which Parker published in 1566, to check the anti-vestiarian faction, had to appear without specific royal sanction; and the Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, which John Foxe published with Parker's approval, received neither royal, parliamentary nor synodical authorisation. Parliament even contested the claim of the bishops to determine matters of faith. "Surely," said Parker to Peter Wentworth, "you will refer yourselves wholly to us therein." "No, by the faith I bear to God," retorted Wentworth, "we will pass nothing before we understand what it is; for that were but to make you popes. Make you popes who list, for we will make you none."

Disputes about vestments had expanded into a controversy over the whole field of Church government and authority. Parker died on 17 May 1575, lamenting that Puritan ideas of "governance" would "in conclusion undo the queen and all others that depended upon her." By his personal conduct, he had set an ideal example for Anglican priests.[16]

Scholarship

Parker's historical research was exemplified in his De antiquitate Britannicæ ecclesiae, and his editions of Asser, Matthew Paris (1571), Thomas Walsingham, and the compiler known as Matthew of Westminster (1571). De antiquitate Britannieæ ecclesiæ was probably printed at Lambeth in 1572, where the archbishop is said to have had an establishment of printers, engravers, and illuminators.[14]

Parker gave the English people the Bishops' Bible, which was undertaken at his request, prepared under his supervision, and published at his expense in 1572. Much of his time and labour from 1563 to 1568 was given to this work. He had also the principal share in drawing up the Book of Common Prayer, for which his skill in ancient liturgies peculiarly fitted him. His liturgical skill was also shown in his version of the psalter.[14] It was under his presidency that the Thirty-nine Articles were finally reviewed and subscribed by the clergy (1562).

Parker published in 1567 an old Saxon Homily on the Sacrament, by Ælfric of Eynsham. He published A Testimonie of Antiquitie Showing the Ancient Fayth in the Church of England Touching the Sacrament of the Body and Bloude of the Lord to prove that transubstantiation was not the doctrine of the ancient English Church.[14] Parker collaborated with his secretary John Joscelyn in his manuscript studies.

"Nosey Parker"

Parker's inquisitiveness about Church matters is sometimes said to have led to his being called "nosey Parker" and this to have been the source of the common English term describing someone who pokes their nose into other people's business.[19] This has, however, no basis in fact.[20]

^Wallechinsky, David (2009). The Book of Lists. USA: Canongate Books. p. 480. ISBN1847676677.

^The Phrase Finder: "Was the first Nosy Parker a real person and, if so, who? We don't know." Cf. also Oxford English Dictionary s.v. nosy parker (entry updated 2003): "Apparently < nosy adj. + the surname Parker. Compare (especially earlier) allusive use as a proper name, apparently with reference to a (probably fictitious) individual taken as the type of someone inquisitive or prying."

References

Graham, Timothy and Andrew G. Watson (1998) The Recovery of the Past in Early Elizabethan England: Documents by John Bale and John Joscelyn from the Circle of Matthew Parker (Cambridge Bibliographical Society Monograph 13). Cambridge: Cambridge Bibliographical Society

John Strype, Life of Parker, originally published in 1711, and re-edited for the Clarendon Press in 1821 (3 vols.), is the principal source for Parker's life.